


The quieter satisfaction of a life well-lived

by LadyRhiyana



Series: The Queen of Love and Beauty [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Female Jaime Lannister, Hurt very little comfort, Male Brienne of Tarth, Not A Fix-It, Season 8 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18905005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: “Don’t go,” Jaime says. “What is the North to us? This is our place. Let them kill each other while we stay safe.”She had refused to surrender the Rock, not even on Cersei’s orders. Ten thousand Unsullied had not been enough to take it from her.“You don’t understand,” Brien says. “You didn’t see that – thing. This goes beyond loyalty. This is about survival. Our children’s survival.”**Ser Brien of Tarth goes North to fight the Night King, leaving his wife Jaime to hold Casterly Rock. Season 8 unfolds as it does - rocks fall, the Lannister twins die - and Brien lives on, a quieter, sadder life.





	The quieter satisfaction of a life well-lived

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. In which I pour out all my feelings about season 8 not through canon - I can't face canon just yet - but through the medium of a gender swap AU. "Queen of Love and Beauty" is one of my favourite works, so it honestly hurts to do this to poor Jaime and Ser Brien - but this is not how I truly envision their future. One day I'll write a proper continuation, and in the meantime I regard this as an AU of my AU. 
> 
> 2\. I'm going to say 8 years pass between season 1 and seasons 7-8.
> 
> 3\. Also - please join me in pretending that Jaime would not have been at the Dragonpit, and that Dacey Mormont survived the Red Wedding.

1.

**

“Are you truly so naïve?” Jaime asks. “Surely you don’t believe Cersei will commit her forces to this madness.”

Brien breathes in, slow and deep. “I don’t care what Cersei does. I gave my word.”

She laughs suddenly, high and mocking. “Your word!”

Even now, after so many years, Brien is still ensnared by her beauty and her fierce pride. 

_You poor, noble fool,_ Lady Olenna had said at the last. _Caught in a lioness’ claws._

“Don’t go,” Jaime says. “What is the North to us? _This_ is our place.” She rests her hand on the thick stone wall, the mountainous bones of Casterly Rock. “Let them kill each other while we stay safe.” 

She had refused to surrender the Rock, not even on Cersei’s orders. Ten thousand Unsullied had not been enough to take it from her.

“You don’t understand,” Brien says. “You didn’t see that – _thing_. This goes beyond loyalty. This is about survival. Our children’s survival.”

She turns to look out the window, down at the practice yard where their rambunctious twin sons flail away at each other wooden swords. 

** 

Eight years had passed since Brien had first crowned Lady Jaime Lannister Queen of Love and Beauty at the Tourney of the Hand. 

He had abandoned his loyalty to House Baratheon for her. He had driven the Young Wolf out of the Westerlands for love of her. He had become her husband and her war leader and had commanded the armies of House Lannister for long, terrible years, all for her. 

He had taken Riverrun. He had sacked Highgarden. He had looted the granaries of the Reach, before the Dragon Queen burned his armies to ash and cinders.

He had stood in the Dragonpit and seen an abomination that terrified him more than any dragon ever could.

** 

“Jaime,” he says. “Please.” 

After long years of marriage, they know better than to issue ultimatums. 

She is still facing away from him. He can’t see her face, but he can see the proud lift of her head, the pure steel of her spine. 

Her hands are trembling. 

“Go, then,” she says tiredly. “Call the banners. Do what you must.” 

He stares at her, longing for more, but she is unbending. He bows his head and turns to walk out. 

Just as he is halfway through the door, he hears her voice. “Do not dare to die, ser,” she says. “Come back when you are done with this folly.”

** 

2\. 

**

He rides north, taking with him as many bannermen, knights and soldiers as remain after the Blackwater Rush and will follow him north on a fool’s errand. Word had spread through the Lannister armies after the summit; the loyal captains who had followed him for long years were expecting his call.

They arrive at Winterfell in good order and in good time. 

Still, he is brought before the Dragon Queen to stand beneath her cold gaze. “Ser Brien of Tarth,” she says. “You bring us the forces of Casterly Rock.” She makes a show of looking around. “And yet I do not see the forces of your wife’s sister with you. Have Cersei’s forces been delayed on the road?”

“Queen Cersei’s forces are not coming,” he says bluntly. “But I made a vow, and so I am here.”

She stares at him for a long, long time. “Tell me, ser Brien, what weight I should give a vow made by the Kingslayer’s husband? The woman who murdered my father in cold blood?” 

Tyrion, Brien’s good-brother, watches him with a warning in his shrewd green and black eyes.

“When I was a child,” she says, “my brother used to tell me stories of what we would do to Lady Jaime Lannister, when we finally came into our own.”

The hall is very silent. Brien breathes in, slow and deep, and holds her terrible, fierce gaze. He forces his hands still, forces himself not to react.

Before the Dragon Queen can decide his fate, King Jon – Lord Jon, now, he supposes – clears his throat. “Your grace,” he says, “we need all the men we can get. We cannot afford to turn him away, or to alienate his forces.”

Lady Sansa Stark measures him with her cold blue eyes. “I have heard many things about you, Ser Brien of Tarth,” she says. “They say you abandoned your true loyalties for love. They say you are ruled by your wife. But I have not heard that you are anything less than honourable.”

And so they give him leave to stay and fight. 

** 

3\. 

**

The battle between the living and the dead was a nightmare that will live in his dreams for the rest of his life. He and his men are stationed on the left flank, with a force of Northerners under the command of a Northern warrior woman, Lady Dacey Mormont. 

Lady Dacey is tall, strong and imposing in her heavy furs, wielding her battle-axe with fierce skill. As the night grows ever darker and colder, as the triumphant Dothraki charge is snuffed out and the dead come against them wave after wave, they fight back to back, thrown together again and again by the course of the battle. 

They fight in the darkness, and then in the burning light of cascading dragonfire; they hold their line as long as they can, fall and die at their posts, until finally they can hold no more and they call the retreat. 

They hold the battlements as long as they can, even as the dead swarm and skitter and come at them again and again and again. He fights, and fights, and fights, until his breath comes harsh and ragged in his chest, until his men are scattered and fallen, until his strength gives out and he almost falls. 

She saves him, braces him with her strength, and in that firelight hell he can see everything she is, brave and true and honest.

Still they fight, pressed back to back, half-blinded by blood and ichor, flailing with their swords and shouting incoherently. 

When the dead press them back against the wall; when he fails to stop a snarling, skittering wight from tearing at the meat of his thigh, sending him crashing to the hard-churned mud; when he falls to his knees, spent and exhausted, and casts his eyes upwards – 

It’s not Dacey he sees at the last, still lifting her axe in defiance against the dead. 

The last thing he sees is Jaime, the proud lift of her head, the pure steel of her spine. 

_Do not dare to die, ser,_ she says. 

_Come back to me._

** 

4.

**

His injuries are so severe they put him out of commission for two weeks. 

By the time he is able to get up and hobble about, the Dragon Queen has already departed for the South and it is past time for Brien to leave Winterfell. 

Lady Sansa stares coolly at him. “Cersei is doomed, ser,” she says. “You must know that.”

“I’ve known that since the Blackwater Rush,” he replies. “But when she’s finished with Cersei, what’s to stop her turning on Casterly Rock?” He looks at her pale, haughty beauty, colder and more patient than Jaime’s, less filled with rage than Cersei’s. “She’s dreamed of this all her life. You know she won’t be satisfied with merely re-taking the Iron Throne.”

** 

The preparations for departure take another week. 

On the last day, the raven comes with the news that all hope of peaceful surrender is lost. 

More, there is a post-script: _The Lion Queen has called in the last remnants of her forces. The Lady of Casterly Rock has answered._

** 

He races south, leaving the bulk of his armies to follow him down the Kingsroad. He rides as quickly as he can, travelling with two spare mounts, but by the time he reaches the outskirts of King’s Landing, it’s too late: the walls have been breached and the battle is already lost. 

He finds Tyrion standing alone by the breach, his expression – indescribable. 

“They surrendered,” his good-brother says faintly. “They rang the bells.”

Even as he speaks, dragonfire rains down on the city from above and the howling ululations of the Dothraki and the cries of Unsullied and Northmen rise above screams and cries for mercy. 

“Jaime is in there,” Brien says. “I have to find her.” 

Acid green wildfire erupts suddenly, and Brien remembers Jaime’s story of the Mad King’s last days. How much of it is still left? Enough to turn the city into an inferno, even without the dragonfire?

Tyrion shakes his head. “Daenerys is burning the Keep already. You can’t possibly make it in time.”

“I have to try!” 

Lost to everything but desperation, Brien spurs his horse through the breach, into the death of the city. 

** 

5.

**

Afterwards, he and Tyrion find them together in the tunnels beneath the Red Keep. 

Both sisters had tried to dig their way out, desperate for escape even at the end. But time and luck had run out, and they had died, together, locked in each other’s arms.

Tyrion falls to his knees and begins to weep, gasping, wracking sobs. Brien gathers Jaime up in his arms, her golden hair, the proud lift of her head, and the pure steel of her spine. 

_Do not dare to die,_ she had said. 

And he had said – what? _I have given my word. This is about survival._

But Jaime had not survived. Proud, fierce, magnificent Jaime; his Queen of Love and Beauty. The mother of his children.

Her razor-sharp smile and her cool, challenging stare, her courage and her strength of will – all gone, now, leaving nothing but a hollow shell.

** 

6.

** 

She had sent the children away before the end. 

Long weeks later, Brien steps onto the old wooden docks of Tarth’s sole harbour. It had been many long years since he had set foot on the island, since he left against his father’s wishes to pledge his allegiance not to Renly Baratheon, their rightful liege lord, but to fierce, golden Jaime Lannister. 

His father had called him a fool and told him not to become involved in the affairs of kings and princes, of stags and lions and wolves. 

_Stay here,_ Lord Selwyn had said. _There may be no glory or grand romance on Tarth, but there is honour, and worth, and the quieter satisfaction of a life well-lived._

But Brien had been caught up in the wonder and glory of her cruel beauty and so he had gone out into the world, determined to make himself worthy of her. 

And now here he is, returned to this quiet isle older and wiser, having known great love and happiness, but also great fear and rage and grief. 

The fisherfolk and villagers seem to have remained unchanged in the intervening years; he recognizes most of them, and returns their greetings as they nod and smile and welcome him back. 

He makes his way up to the hall alone, with only his horse for company, as he had done when he was a young, romantic boy dreaming of becoming a knight. Every curve and turn of the road is achingly familiar to him; the well-known landmarks are like old friends. He looks over the same blue seas and the same thick-forested hills he’s known all his life, and he aches, deep inside – it has not changed at all. Only he has changed. 

And there – there – is Evenfall hall, so familiar – and yet it appears so small now, when in his mind it had always been a great fortress. 

The door is open, welcoming him home, and his father stands waiting, two golden-haired boys, as alike as peas in a pod, by his side – 

He stumbles out of his saddle and goes to his knees, taking them into his arms. 

“I’m here,” he says, weeping. “I’ve come back to you.” 

His father takes him into his arms in turn. 

“Welcome home,” he says.


End file.
